Amid record ocean temperatures, a third olive ridley sea turtle has laid its eggs in Southern California — this time on San Buenaventura State Beach in Ventura. The rare event occurred on Sunday, according to witnesses and officials, and marks the third naturally-occurring sea turtle nest ever found on the U.S. West Coast. Ventura resident Julie Scorsatto Weyers encountered the nest while walking along the beach Tuesday.
Officials have built a cordon around the clutch of eggs, which lie between the shoreline and the boardwalk. “I can’t believe they’re there. I just can’t believe it,” said Scorsatto Weyers, a 30-year resident of the city. “I just want them to get the little guys out of here so they’re as safe as possible.” A passerby alerted State Parks to the nest on Sunday, a spokesperson said.
The state agency alerted U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for sea turtles on land. An extreme marine heat wave and a strong El Niño have pushed Southern California water temperatures closer to those of the turtles’ typical nesting grounds. California’s first sea turtle nest appeared Sept. 16, when an olive ridley laid a clutch of eggs near the Surfside community in Seal Beach.
Three days later a second olive ridley laid eggs eight miles south on the sand in Huntington Beach. With high tides expected to flood the nesting sites and destroy the eggs, federal biologists moved the clutches Sept. 25 to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Those eggs are nearing the end of their 45 to 60 day incubation period, and may hatch any day. Fish and Wildlife has not yet confirmed if the Ventura eggs will be relocated as well.
Though still listed as a threatened animal under the Endangered Species Act, the olive ridley is one of the more abundant sea turtles. The small, heart-shaped turtles are normally found throughout tropical regions of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, with large nesting populations in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Before September, the farthest known northern nest was approximately 700 miles south of Orange County in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.
The Ventura nest now bears that distinction.
